Open source spying and blogging for intelligence agencies
Spying ain’t what it used to be. The latest issue of the New York Times magazine sports a very interesting in-depth article titled Open Source Spying. The piece examines the potential of emerging technologies such as blogs, wikis, and other social software to improve how intelligence agencies function. However the key point that emerges is that intelligence agencies are currently very poor at tapping approaches that require a more open and less linear mentality. John Arquilla, a professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School, summarizes the bureaucracy and rigidity of US intelligence analysis:
“Fifteen years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union,” he said. “Who knew it would be replicated today in the intelligence community?”
I have written repeatedly before about the rise of “open source intelligence” and how social network analysis tools are being used in the intelligence community. One of the most fundamental shifts over the last decades is the far greater availability of information (ranging across billions of websites, untold mobile camera photos, commentary and insights from millions of subject experts, through to the powerful purvey of Google Earth). For intelligence agencies, this dramatically shifts the central issue from gathering exclusive information, to making sense of an almost infinite amount of data, which is available to everyone.
The emergent properties of an effectively integrated community of blogs and wikis mean that the most relevant and important information floats to the top. These kinds of capabilities must be tapped by intelligence operations in order to filter and assess what is worth responding to and raising to the executive level. Linear report writing, editing, and escalation doesn’t have a hope of working effectively in this environment. Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School, the most prominent apostle of Enterprise 2.0, has written a thought-provoking blog post about the New York Times article, drawing out the deep commonality of the issues facing both intelligence agencies and corporations in implementing social software across organizations. It is certainly clear from the article that there are serious efforts across America’s army of intelligence agencies to tap these tools. However these initiatives are constrained by lack of collaboration between the agencies, and senior executive fears and lack of understanding. The shift of intelligence to using vast troves of newly public (as well as covert) information is not a trivial issue. Terrorism is a peculiarly networked and emergent phenomenon which requires similar approaches to contain it. On the other hand, as intelligence efforts improve, privacy is superceded for everyone, not just those targetted. Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame draws out the potential for radical transparency to mean not just spooks, but in fact everyone, uncovers and analyzes critical information. That’s absolutely the long-term trend, though it will take a rather long time to unfold given the current people in power.
